Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Just quickly: if you’re expecting this sequel to be replete with returning characters, you’ve got the wrong book. I get it, it’s nice and tidy when all the favorites come back for the sequel, but this is real life. How implausible would it be if all of my surviving extended family simply found themselves at the center of another murder mystery? It’s unlucky enough—or lucky if you ask Simone’s checkbook—that it’s happened to me twice, let alone the rest of them. I’m on good terms with my ex-wife, Erin, but we’re more casual acquaintances these days than a crime-solving duo. My mother, Audrey, my stepfather, Marcelo, and my stepsister, Sofia, would hardly be enthused by the prospect of sitting on a train for a week. They’re at a wedding in Spain actually. To be honest, if they wouldn’t mind doing me a favor and stumbling on a murder there, I could use the trip and the tax deduction for another book.

My point is: real life doesn’t have cameos.

I picked up the phone. It was my uncle Andy.

You need to know a few things about Andy. The first is that he’s a horticulturist, which means his job is to grow grass on football fields. Perhaps in contrast to the slowness of his job, he’s keen to make fast friendships and tends to reflect back the personality of whoever he’s talking to rather than being himself, in the hope it will make him more appealing. Unfortunately this often only succeeds in making him the loudest voice with the least conviction. He is, suitably to his profession, a man often trodden on.

He’s also a man who believes that youth is a fish that can be reeled back in. We’d recently thought he might have come to terms with his vintage (midfifties)—he’d at last shaved off his terrible goatee—but that hope was quickly dashed when he emerged with his hair bleached platinum blond. We’d all bitten our lips, except Sofia, never short of a barb, who’d asked what had frightened him so much.

I answered the video call to a nearly medical insight into Andy’s nostrils. I rolled my eyes at Juliette while he fumbled with the camera. The picture spun blurrily, the scuffling sounds masking a hushed argument happening just off-mic, the snipes no doubt coming from my aunt Katherine.

Katherine is my late father’s little sister. A wild youth had been transformed by a tragic accident into an uptight adulthood. She’s a stickler for rules: her star sign may as well be School Principal. She roots for the umpires and is the type of person who says, with a completely straight face, “How could you forget? It’s in the calendar.”

Katherine is at her happiest when she’s got something to fix, so Andy, who has the unfortunate affliction of doing most things incorrectly, really is the perfect match for her.

Another thing you need to know about Andy is that he wasn’t too happy with how he was portrayed in the first book. He’s adamant that I made him look like a bumbling airhead and he had more of a role in piecing together the mystery than I gave him credit for. He accused me of emasculating him, a word he repeated so often I was fairly sure both that it was new to him and that Katherine had taught him what it meant. He’d especially taken aim at a passage in which I’d referred to him as a terrifically boring man. I’d pointed out that technically I’d called him terrific, but even he wasn’t falling for that one. So I’ll try to do a bit better this time.

“Ernest! How are you, buddy?” Andy said, handsomely.

“We’ve just boarded the Ghan.” I spun the camera so he could see the cabin. “Just waiting to set off.”

Andy whistled. “You’re a lucky sod, mate. I’d love to go one day. I don’t know if you know this”—he lowered his voice, like it was a secret—“but I’m considered a bit of an amateur ferroequinologist myself.”

It’s rare that Andy’s vocabulary bamboozles me, but that was a word I had to look up later. It’s a decidedly languid way of saying one has an interest in “iron horses,” aka trains. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Andy, to whom the length of grass is a passion, was also a fan of trains.

“What NR class is it hauling? I assume about one point five tons?”

“I’ve got to be honest, Andy, I haven’t understood a single thing you’ve said. I think you might have confessed to being a feral entomologist.”

“Fer-ro—” He started to sound out the word, but then there was some chatter in the background, some measure of get to the point, and he cleared his throat.

“Hi, Katherine!” I yelled, so she’d hear me off screen.

“I’m calling in a professional capacity,” Andy said. This concerned me immediately; Andy and I have no professional association whatsoever. “I’ve got this client, and I’m hoping you might provide a consult.”

“I don’t know much about football fields.”

“No, it’s a different kind of client. It’s a mystery. You’re good at those.”

Client. Mystery. Those words were more baffling than ferroequinologist. What he was trying to tell me slowly dawned.